www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Question on the Morality of Sex

Hey, I have a question. I've heard that past Medieval Christians considered oral sex to be sodomy. Do the Catholic or Orthodox Churches have any official position on oral sex? Is it sinful? Did the church fathers say anything about it.
God bless,
Joshua Dotson

Christ is in our midst!!

I don't know what the Church Fathers had to say about the subject, but I will tell you that my parish (Latin) had a course for seniors in high school as the last part of our religious education. It dealt with all this in no uncertain terms. We were taught that oral, anal, and manual sex was not only sinful, but it was forbidden not only to singles, but also to the married. There was only one chaste sexual expression: inside marriage and ordered so that it was always open to the transmission of life. Incidentally that was 1967-1968 the same year Humanae Vitae was published.

Bob

Thanks for the reply. I think I agree with you, Theophan. Everything I've read from the fathers seems to imply any form of sex (which denies the possibility of procreation) is sinful.

Christ is in our midst!!

I think there is more here. The acts you mention and that I listed above all strike at the God-created dignity of the human person. Our mouths, for example, were created to praise God and to receive Our Lord in the Eucharist. Is anything more degrading than using the same mouth for the acts mentioned? Imitating an animal in a sex act--is anything more degrading? In the Old Testament, Onan was condemned for his action. Is there anything more we need to know about how sacred we are?

We learn--or should always remember--that Christ raised our human nature from its fallen state by His taking on flesh. He took that resurrected flesh into the Mansions of the Just and sits with it on the Throne of Glory. Does that mean anything? Does that not tell us that we were created for more than living like animals?

Before Christ came, all sorts of depraved acts were assumed normal in human societies. Slavery, keeping children as sex toys, abandoning unwanted children, the strong preying on the weak, the Roman "Pater Familias law" that allowed a man to kill anyone in his household (under his roof) for any reason. All these acts that we would consider abominations were common. So, too, every sort of sexual depravity.

IMHO when we contemplate or participate in this kind of behavior, we forget who we are and at great a price we have been ransomed.

Pax et Bonum!
I think it was HH patriarch Bartholomeos who has said, that the Church stops at the door of the bed room...
In my opinion there are no sinfull (nonviolent) sexual acts in christian marriage.

With all due respect to you, I think your opinion is wrong.

When I was in the darkness of a very wicked and sinful life, I took absolute delight in all manner of sexually perverted acts, even with my wife once I was married. Now that I have had time to reflect, having pursued Christ and His way of love, I have come to understand that even in marriage, such acts were not acts of self-giving love, but rather were being used strictly for my pleasure. I cannot tell you how deeply I regret using people as toys for my disordered passions, and have come to realize that in the darkened state of mankind, we have given the sexual act an almost god-like worship and reverence.

What I have come to realize is that the physical union of two people should be a expression of the deepest love for the other and a self-giving act. The pleasure of the act should be secondary to the joy of being united to someone who is more dear to our hearts than our own well-being, even to the point of death, as Christ showed us on the Cross when He gave Himself for His Bride, the Church.

I must agree with Theophan on this one. We are fallen creatures and walk in darkness. This affects every aspect of our lives, and especially regarding this conversation, how we view the sexual act and union.

Christ is in our midst!!

Krysostomos,

I would to ask you how you interpret St. Paul's admonition in one of his epistles in which he makes a comment about "how to take woman" now that we are new creatures in Christ. He would have been well aware of the hedonism in the culture surrounding him--and throughout the whole world at that time. Christ came to make us new people--apart from those around us. He didn't mean to christianize what was around him but He came to raise us to what we were supposed to be at Creation. The acts described above demean the other--whether wife or husband--and that is not what we are called to do or to be. We are supposed to love--care deeply about--our spouse as our own body. No one demeans himself unless tripped up by the Enemy and then we repent, asking to be put back on the right track.

On another note, there is a story in the Desert Fathers about a man who struggled against the sin of fornication. He kept repeating to himself, "Those who do these things shall perish in everlasting fire." I truly believe that is still true. The world has moved back to the paganism into which the Church was born. Father Seraphim Rose in his book, Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, warns us of the slide believers can take if they are not careful in all our practices.

Pax et Bonum!
I have been a catholic more than 40 years, more than half of my life. Never have I heard no one mentioning, priest or lay person, about sinfull sexual acts in christian marriage.

Christ is in our midst!!

40 years only takes you back to the late 1980s. It was at the beginning of the 1970s that the Catholic Church backed off preaching the sexual morality that had been part of our heritage from the ages.

But aside from this issue, if we are no different in every aspect of our lives from the person next door who is not one of us, then we have missed the boat altogether and may be among those the Lord says He does not know when He comes.